Modern Poetry in Translation: Recent Episodes
Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine
When Ted Hughes and Daniel Weissbort founded MPT in 1965 they had two principal ambitions: to get poetry out from behind the Iron Curtain into a wider circulation in English and to benefit writers and the reading public in Britain and America by confronting them with good work from abroad. They published poetry that dealt truthfully with the real contemporary world. For more than 50 years MPT has continued and widened that founding intent.
Read these poems on the Modern Poetry in Translation website: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/four-poems-3/Joshua Edward writes in the introduction:Every Translation Is a ShipwreckBorn and raised on an island, I’ve always dreamed of life at sea, but lacking ‘boat money’ and unable to tell a bowline from a marlinspike, I’ve lamentably remained onshore. Still, I indulge in the idea that the poet’s vocation is similar (at least in outline) to that of the sailor. Aren’t both considered diminished remnants of romantic and impetuous eras? And don’t both occupations hazard fatal depths? These are the waters I’m currently interested in plying, and the poets translated here, Tristan Corbière and Renée Vivien, are well suited to this double dream of poetry and seafaring. Both these poets often take the ocean as their subject, and both are considered what Paul Verlaine called poètes maudits: damned or absolute poets, who’ve gone to the art’s greatest depths.Speaking of damned, it’s easy to also view translators as seafarers. Every translator is a voyager returned from a trip, who wants to repeat the experience with others. But this second journey uses only dead reckoning and is never completed, because every translation is a shipwreck. Which is not to say a disaster: at best the translator fools their companions into thinking they arrived at the intended destination. Also good is when the castaways happily forget about the original port of call, or they are inspired to take the journey themselves, to read the text in its original language. At worst the translator inspires a mutiny, and is lashed to the mast, banished, or flogged. I hope that these attempts get across some good measure of the enthusiasm I have for the original poems and for the act of translation itself.
Readings by Adam Piette and Ágnes Lehóczky.Read the translations of these poems on the Modern Poetry in Translation website: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/two-poems-12/Translators Adam Piette and Ágnes Lehóczky write in the introduction:These poems are excerpts from The University Island (forthcoming from And Other Stories), a major work in progress by Hungarian poet István Vörös. The text functions less as a memoir than an anti-memoir—a powerful satire in free verse that chronicles three decades in the trenches of academia. The protagonist, a failed academic and poet, is a tragicomic figure in constant dialogue with his phantom companion, Hermes, the decipherer of the shapeshifting incomprehensible.This inner journey through the history of philosophical hermeneutics echoes the non-conformist souls of twentieth-century literature, reminiscent of Georg Büchner’s Lenz, Paul Celan’s posthumous phantoms, and the morose narrators of Thomas Bernhard. Vörös depicts the slow physical and psychological collapse of a ‘failed lecturer’ challenging a politicised, devalued system. It is a sobering critique of an institutional ‘madhouse’ where the academic becomes the very agent of academia’s demise.The work is a fiercely nihilistic exploration of annihilation, documenting the destruction of the cultural agora and the natural world alike. Yet, Vörös’s genius lies in his ability to present a hyper-real comic world with a humour that is both grotesque and hyperbolic. The narrative occupies a thin line between fact and caricature, where surreal decapitations are viscerally, comically real.Translating this work was a collaborative effort born of shared experience in the British and Hungarian academic systems. We were compelled by its moral weight and its interrogation of the contemporary poem’s raison d’être. Ultimately, the book asks a vital question: do we surrender to a system that reduces us to puppets, or do we believe that literature remains powerful enough to push back against institutional hypocrisy?
, on the other hand, rebels against these dictations. Her poems discuss Balinese lives by refusing to be ‘a Balinese’. She’s not a Balinese who’s being visited; she’s a Balinese who’s visiting. She traces a connection between Bali to the greater Nusantara and the rest of the world to produce a form of global poetic empathy.
Read these poems on the Modern Poetry in Translation website: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/three-poems-4/Ági Bori writes in the translator's note:The poems presented here are a powerful sample of Anna T. Szabó’s oeuvre. Translating her chiselled and daunting poetic voice has been a profoundly moving and humbling experience.Due to the increasingly strict dictatorship in Romania in the eighties, where Anna was part of the oppressed Hungarian minority, she moved to Hungary with her family at the age of fifteen. She started as one of the late intellectual successors of the legendary short-lived literary magazine, New Moon (1946–1948), and seems to agree with one of the authors in its circle, Géza Ottlik, who said: ‘Existence is my profession.’Anna presents experiences as if they are empirical observations. Her poems are often anchored in pain and suffering, both physical and emotional, revealing her awareness and responsiveness to the emotions of others. Her writings seem to encompass extreme psychic states. ‘Disgust’ is a case study in what I will call ‘empirical observation of everyday horrors’. It charts the mental state of being lost in the world, hitting against the edges of existence. Disgust is distrust: it is losing the essential sense of security. ‘The Lake’ echoes a feeling that was named in the short story, ‘The Imp of the Perverse’, by Edgar Allan Poe: a compulsion to commit an act against one’s own interests. In ‘Crossing, out’ Anna tries to describe death. She was asked to write an elegy for someone she hadn’t seen in over thirty years. The poem deals with the feeling of worldly alienation in which someone is thrown into an abyss: a place without language or direction, where everything earthly is negated, including logic and duality.
Read the translations of this poem on the Modern Poetry in Translation website: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/three-poems-3/Translator Stine An writes in the introduction: Yoo Heekyung’s fifth poetry collection, Winter Night Rabbit Worries (Hyundae Munhak, 2023), turns to the origins of stories and poetry. Both the tales that get passed on through time around a small fire on a winter night and the tales spun in the dark alone as a prelude to dreaming.When I first encountered Yoo’s story-poems, they felt like fine watercolour etchings from an old storybook—delicate, wistful, and glowing with a quiet warmth. Later, Yoo shared that his work was haunted by Aloysius Bertrand’s Gaspard de la Nuit: Fantasies in the Manner of Rembrandt and Callot (1842), the collection that introduced the modern prose poem to the Western literary tradition and inspired Baudelaire’s Paris Spleen. These character-driven prose poems are like intimate one-act plays that flame into existence as visions.Within South Korean poetry, his debut Today’s Morning Vocabulary (Moonji Books, 2011) marked a departure from the experimental avant-garde poetics popular at the time. Yoo’s work as a writer and cultural worker is undergirded by his faith in poetry’s plurality, accessibility, and necessity. Poetry is air: the atmosphere he’s shared through Wit N Cynical, the poetry bookshop and project space he founded in Seoul set to celebrate its 10-year anniversary in July 2026.Yoo approaches translation as literary collaboration, as a form of spooky action at a distance. He has described our work being connected by an invisible thread. I reflected on this thread as I brought my own lyricism and literary experiences to these poems. I imagined myself paying attention to the minute vibrations in the language to portray the tonal shadows and the rhythms of the many voices heard and the gestures felt through the dark. – Stine An
My best friend is in love with you, by Danae Sioziou, translated by Panagiota Stoltidou by Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine
I will not repeat Phryni…, by Iliassa Sequin, translated by Calliope Michail by Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine
'Minora Poetica X' by Dimitra Kotoula, tr. Dimitra Kotoula by Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine
'Polysyllabic Words' by Jazra Khaleed, tr. Jason Rigas by Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine
'Names' by George Le Nonce, tr. Kostya Tsolakis by Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine
'The Sea's Remorse' by Argyris Stavropoulos, tr. Gigi Papoulias by Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine
In this special edition, celebrating the magazine's 60th anniversary, we returned to its earliest days with one of the founding members, the graphic designer of Richard Hollis. Richard Hollis designed the very first issue of MPT, working closely with editors Ted Hughes and Daniel Weissbort, and he remained with the magazine as design of a four decades from the broad sheet format, the first issue through to the paperback designs of the 1990s and early two thousands. Joining Richard in conversation about the magazine's history is writer, translator and MPT trustee JS Tennant co-author with Hollis of Cuba, 62.
Atmosphere by Subhro Bandopadhyay, translated from Bengali by Sampurna ChattarjiPublished in MPT Rhythms of the Land: Focus on the Poetry of NatureRead this poem online: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/atmosphere/
Kafi: Sanwal Gurmani, translated from Saraiki by Mediah Ahmed, introduced and read by Mediah Ahmed, and the original poet Sanwal GurmaniPublished in MPT Rhythms of the Land: Focus on the Poetry of NatureThis Kafi by Sanwal Gurmani pulses with the rhythms of love, land, and longing. Set against the backdrop of nature—the forest, the deer, the red earth—it weaves the emotional terrain of human connection into the physical landscape. The forest’s anxiety for its fawn mirrors our own vulnerabilities, while the path of love becomes a metaphorical journey across the land. The naghaaraa of love, traditionally used in communal celebrations and declarations, is reimagined here as an instrument of peace—resolving wars through rhythm and resonance. In a world increasingly marked by conflict, this poem calls us back to tenderness, rootedness, and reconciliation—the true rhythms of the land and heart alike.
Published in MPT Rhythms of the Land: Focus on the Poetry of NatureSummer: N.S. Sigogo, translated from isiNdebele by Stephen WalshRead by Stephen Walsh with isiNdebele read by Albert Nyathi Read online: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/summer-2/
Published in MPT Rhythms of the Land: Focus on the Poetry of NatureMy heart is an active volcano by Begoña Ugalde, translated from Spanish (Chile) by Drago YuracRead this poem online: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/my-heart-is-an-active-volcano/
Listen to 'Desire' and 'Half-open Doorway' by M/P. Bonde, translated from Mozambican Portuguese by Beth Hickling-Moore. Featuring the translations read by Beth Hickling-Moore and the original poems read by the poet, M.P Bonde. These poems are published in MPT Presently Proximal Person: Focus on Experimental Translations, No.2 2025. You can find more poems from this series and the introduction by Beth Hickling-Moore on the MPT website https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/five-poems-2/
Listen to two poems in English and Korean, written by Moon Bo Young and translated from Korean by Dabin Jeong.This recording features an introduction by the translator Dabin Jeong, followed by alternating English translations and the Korean original poems read by Moon Bo Young and Dabin Jeong.This poem is published in MPT Presently Proximal Person: Focus on Experimental Translations, No.2 2025. You can find the full text of this poem and the introduction on the MPT website: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/two-poems-from-battleground/
Listen to three poems by Inna Krasnoper, translated from Russian by Inna Krasnoper and Elina Alter.This recording features an introduction by the translator Elina Alter, followed by alternating English translations and the Russian original poems read by Elina Alter and Inna Krasnoper.This poem is published in MPT Presently Proximal Person: Focus on Experimental Translations, No.2 2025. You can find the full text of this poem and the introduction on the MPT website: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/three-poems-2/
Listen to 'Clarice 6-4-68' by Ana Cristina Cesar, translated from Portuguese by Mónica De La Torre. Including the translation by Mónica De La Torre , the original poem read in Portuguese by Andrea Lerner, and the introduction in the form of a letter by Mónica De La Torre.This poem is published in MPT Presently Proximal Person: Focus on Experimental Translations, No.2 2025. You can find the full text of this poem and the introduction on the MPT website https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/clarice-6-4-68/
Dong Li reads the Endglish translation of Liu Ligan's poem'Literature Lesson', along with the original poem recorded by Liu Ligan, and Dong Li's own introduction, published in MPT 'Presently Proximal Person: Focus on Experimental Translations'.
From 'Sea Shells: Emerging Poets from Gaza' selected and translated by Batool Abu Akleen: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/sea-shells-an-anthology-of-emerging-poets-from-gaza/
From 'Sea Shells: Emerging Poets from Gaza' selected and translated by Batool Abu Akleen: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/sea-shells-an-anthology-of-emerging-poets-from-gaza/
From 'Sea Shells: Emerging Poets from Gaza' selected and translated by Batool Abu Akleen: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/sea-shells-an-anthology-of-emerging-poets-from-gaza/
From 'Sea Shells: Emerging Poets from Gaza' selected and translated by Batool Abu Akleen: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/sea-shells-an-anthology-of-emerging-poets-from-gaza/
From 'Sea Shells: Emerging Poets from Gaza' selected and translated by Batool Abu Akleen: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/sea-shells-an-anthology-of-emerging-poets-from-gaza/
From 'Sea Shells: Emerging Poets from Gaza' selected and translated by Batool Abu Akleen: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/sea-shells-an-anthology-of-emerging-poets-from-gaza/
From 'Sea Shells: Emerging Poets from Gaza' selected and translated by Batool Abu Akleen: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/sea-shells-an-anthology-of-emerging-poets-from-gaza/
From 'Sea Shells: Emerging Poets from Gaza' selected and translated by Batool Abu Akleen: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/sea-shells-an-anthology-of-emerging-poets-from-gaza/
From 'Sea Shells: Emerging Poets from Gaza' selected and translated by Batool Abu Akleen: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/sea-shells-an-anthology-of-emerging-poets-from-gaza/
Featuring poetry and translation from MPT Your Language Anticipating Mine: Focus on Catalan, hosted by Ronald Puppo with AKaiser and Marialena CarrFor a transcript and to find out more, visit mptmagazine.com/mpt-podcast-catalan-edition-ronald-puppo-speaks-to-kaiser-and-marialena-carr/
Cindy Juyong Ok speaks to Sarah Hesketh, on translating Kim Hyesoon - and more.Cindy Juyong Ok's translations feature in MPT Fresh and Salt: Focus on Water. Find out more about this issue on our website: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/magazine/fresh-and-salt-focus-on-water/
Published in MPT Salam to Gaza: Focus on Dissent and Resistance: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/magazine/salam-to-gaza-focus-on-dissent-and-resistance/
Published in MPT Salam to Gaza: Focus on Dissent and Resistance: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/magazine/salam-to-gaza-focus-on-dissent-and-resistance/
Published in MPT Salam to Gaza: Focus on Dissent and Resistance: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/magazine/salam-to-gaza-focus-on-dissent-and-resistance/
Published in MPT Salam to Gaza: Focus on Dissent and Resistance: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/magazine/salam-to-gaza-focus-on-dissent-and-resistance/
Salam to Gaza: Hussein Barghouthi, translated by Suneela Mubayi. We are grateful to Suneela Mubayi for providing these recordings, featuring a live reading from the event "Nakba Then and Now: Refuse Silence" published on YouTube by The Radical Book Collective and the Polis Project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wfuqn34gY_I&t=5839, followed by an original recording of the poet Hussein Barghouthi reading the poem.
Two poems by Amelia Rosselli, translated by Roberta Antognini and Deborah Woodard from Italian by Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine
The Seamstresses, Missak Manouchian translated by Jennifer Manoukian from Western Armenian by Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine
Destruction of Texts: Yi Sang, translated by Translated by Jack Jung from Korean by Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine
When Spring Comes, by Najwan Darwish, translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid.This recording made by Kareem James Abu-Zeid. Featured in MPT Bearing the Burden of Sameness: Focus on Care.Read this poem and more: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/magazine/bearing-the-burden-of-sameness-focus-on-care/
Miss River Snail by Xinyang Wu, translated by Tuoya Wulan.This recording was made by Tuoya Wulan. Featured in MPT Bearing the Burden of Sameness: Focus on Care. Read these poems and more: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/magazine/bearing-the-burden-of-sameness-focus-on-care/
This recording made by Adrija Ghosh.Audio recording of the poem featured in MPT Bearing the Burden of Sameness: Focus on Care. Read these poems and more at: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/magazine/bearing-the-burden-of-sameness-focus-on-care/
Care Advice, Ester Naomi Perquin, translated by David Colmer. This recording made by David Calmer and Ester Naomi Perquin.This poem is featured in MPT Bearing the Burden of Sameness: Focus on Care. Read these poems and more at: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/magazine/bearing-the-burden-of-sameness-focus-on-care/
This recording is by Abdullah O. Jimoh.Audio recording is of the poem featured in MPT Bearing the Burden of Sameness: Focus on Care. Read these poems and more at: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/magazine/bearing-the-burden-of-sameness-focus-on-care/
This Podcast accompanies MPT Call the Sea A Poet: Focus on Malta. Khairani Barokka speaks with contributors Adrian Grima and Albert Gatt. Find out more about this issue on the MPT website: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/magazine/call-the-sea-a-poet-focus-on-malta/A full transcript is available at https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/podcast-khairani-barokka-speaks-with-adrian-grima-and-albert-gatt/
Nadia López García, ‘The Way of the Deer’ - Tr. Gabriela Ramirez-Chavez & Whitney Devos from Spanish by Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine
Sodïq Oyèkànmí, ‘river’ - Translated by the poet from Yorùbá by Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine
Concha Méndez, 'This Must Be My Last Loss' - Translated by Harriet Truscott from Spanish by Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine
Jaku Mata, ‘Before the City Goes Under Water’ - Translated by Eric Abalajon from Filipino by Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine
Kim Seon-Hyang, ‘Water Snake’ - Translated by Darcy Paquet and Sun Kyoung Yoon from Korean by Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine
Dzifa Benson speaks to MPT Editor Khairani Barokka: On names, poetry, and the Ewe language. The poetry in this podcast is featured in MPT Measureless Melodies, available at www.mptmagazine.com For a full transcript, see https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/dzifa-benson-speaks-to-khairani-barokka-on-names-poetry-and-the-ewe-language/
Audio from MPT 'Call the Sea a Poet: Focus on Malta'. To read these poems in full visit www.modernpoetryintranslation.com
Audio from MPT 'Call the Sea a Poet: Focus on Malta'. To read these poems in full visit www.modernpoetryintranslation.com
Audio from MPT 'Call the Sea a Poet: Focus on Malta'. To read these poems in full visit www.modernpoetryintranslation.com
Audio from MPT 'Call the Sea a Poet: Focus on Malta'. To read these poems in full visit www.modernpoetryintranslation.com
These recordings are of poems featured in April 2023 issue of Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine – Measureless Melodies: Focus on Vietnam. To read these poems and explore the issue see www.modernpoetryintranslation.com
These recordings are of poems featured in April 2023 issue of Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine – Measureless Melodies: Focus on Vietnam. To read these poems and explore the issue see www.modernpoetryintranslation.com
These recordings are of poems featured in April 2023 issue of Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine – Measureless Melodies: Focus on Vietnam. To read these poems and explore the issue see www.modernpoetryintranslation.com
These recordings are of poems featured in April 2023 issue of Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine – Measureless Melodies: Focus on Vietnam. To read these poems and explore the issue see www.modernpoetryintranslation.com
These recordings are of poems featured in April 2023 issue of Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine – Measureless Melodies: Focus on Vietnam. To read these poems and explore the issue see www.modernpoetryintranslation.com
These recordings are of poems featured in April 2023 issue of Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine – Measureless Melodies: Focus on Vietnam. To read these poems and explore the issue see www.modernpoetryintranslation.com
Jhumpa Lahiri speaks to MPT Editor Khairani Barokka, discussing self-translation and writing poetry. The poems featured in this podcast were published in MPT 'Wrap it in Banana Leaves; the Food Focus' in 2022. You can find out more about this issue and subscribe on the MPT Magazine website: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/subscribe/A full transcript of this podcast is available at https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/jhumpa-lahiri-speaks-to-khairani-barokka-on-self-translation-and-turning-to-poetry/
Jhumpa Lahiri – Cupboard. From MPT No.3 2022. Wrap It in Banana Leaves: The Food Focus by Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine
Ervina Halili, ‘The March of the Earth’ Translated by Suzana Vuljevic from Albanian by Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine
Lee Jenny, ‘On Mornings I Drink Corn Soup’ Translated by Archana Madhavan from Korean by Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine
Adriana Lisboa, ‘Bowl’ Translated by Alison Entrekin from Brazilian Portuguese by Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine
Fu Hao, ‘Birthday’ – Translated by the poet from Chinese by Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine
Jhio Jan Navarro, ‘Smokestack’ – Translated by Eric Abalajon from Hiligaynon by Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine
2021 Writers în Residence at MPT Sam Riviere & Cătălina Stanislav speak to Elena Vlădăreanu and Gabi Eftimie. For a transcript please visit: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/romanian-poetry-sam-riviere-catalina-stanislav-speak-to-elena-vladareanu-and-gabi-eftimie/
This podcast accompanies the spring 2021 MPT: Clean Hands: Focus on the Pandemic in Europe.
This focus section includes a poems from the StAnza 'Windowswap' project – pairing up poets to share photos of the views from their windows and then respond in poetry form to their partner’s view.
In this podcast Clare Pollard spoke to one of these poet pairs – Astrid Alben and Agnès Agboton, with translator Lawrence Schimel. Tune in for a discussion of poetry, the pandemic and writing through lockdown.
Find out more about this issue at https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/magazine/clean-hands-2021-number-1/
Find the windows poems online at: https://stanzapoetry.org/festival/exhibitions/windowswap
This podcast is presented by 2020 Writer in Residence, Soje. It is published as part of 'Chogwa 5: Revisitation', a special issue of chogwa zine, ion which Soje invites part contributors to revise any past chogwa translations and 'do what you want to do'.
Read the issue online: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/chogwa-issue-5-revisitation/ Transcript of this podcast: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/chogwa-revisitiation-podcast-transcript/
This podcast follows an online workshop on a selection of three haiku, chosen by Alan Cummings. Alan Cummings is Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies at SOAS University of London. He works on early modern Japanese literature and theatre. Amongst his translations is Haiku: Love (British Museum Press, 2013).
The workshop focused on three haiku, by Enomoto Seifu, Yosa Buson and Sugita Hisajo. Find out more about the workshop: https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/workshop/haiku-workshop/
This workshop was generously sponsored by if:book as part of the Dot Award, set up to encourage literary authors to develop new work inspired by digital possibilities for literature.
This podcast follows our recent online translation workshop on 'Sonora: a Work in Progress' by Galician poet Chus Pato. In this podcast, translator and workshop leader Erín Moure gives her feedback on the different translations submitted, and has selected her favourite to feature here.
For a full transcription see www.modernpoetryintranslation.com
This is a live recording of the London launch of MPT The Illuminated Paths, featuring some of the most exciting emerging poets from across North Africa.
As part of the British Council’s Majaaz project, ten poets writing in Arabic, Arabic dialect and Tamazight were brought together in Tunisia in summer 2018 with some of the UK’s best poets to make collaborative translations. This event celebrated the exhilarating translations that emerged from the project and the friendships that developed. Introduced by editor Clare Pollard, this podcast includes readings from Fatma Krouma and Ashref Kerkeni (Tunisia), Adil Latefi and Nassima Raoui (Morocco), Fadhila Bechar and Mohamed Rafik Taibi (Algeria), and the UK poet-translators Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Vidyan Ravinthiran, Stewart Sanderson, Adham Smart and Martha Sprackland.
For a full transcript please visit the project page http://modernpoetryintranslation.com/lakoat-kujawas-a-digital-pamphlet-curated-by-poet-in-residence-khairani-barokka/
Tim Saunders reads ‘Porthpean’ – in English and Cornish
From MPT 'Our Small Universe: Focus on Languages of the United Kingdom', Spring 2019
See more at wwwmodernpoetryintranslation.com
Anna Kessling reads ‘SW16 1961’ – a Streatham dialect translation of AE Housman from the MPT online translation workshop
Mukur Petrolwala reads ‘રાખ (Ash)’ – a Gujarati translation of AE Housman from the MPT online translation workshop
Liz Berry reads ‘Iron Oss’ – in Black Country Dialect
From MPT 'Our Small Universe: Focus on Languages of the United Kingdom', Spring 2019
See more at wwwmodernpoetryintranslation.com
Jhilmil Breckenridge reads ‘वेनलॉक एज पर वन मुशकिल मे है’ – a Hindi translation of AE Housman – from the online translation workshop
Steve Dornan reads a version of Vahabzade’s ‘Knock the Fences Down’ – translated into Ulster Scots
From MPT 'Our Small Universe: Focus on Languages of the United Kingdom', Spring 2019
See more at wwwmodernpoetryintranslation.com
Christine De Luca reads ‘Dis life is nivver enyoch’ – in Shetlandic by Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine
Gerda Stevenson reads ‘I am the Airt’ – in Scots
From MPT 'Our Small Universe: Focus on Languages of the United Kingdom', Spring 2019
See more at wwwmodernpoetryintranslation.com
David Morley reads ‘Roma and Roma’ – a Romani tranlsation of AE Housman from the MPT online translation workshop
Sophie Herxheimer reads ‘On ze Kvestion off a ‘Hostile Infyroment’ – in Inklisch
From MPT 'Our Small Universe: Focus on Languages of the United Kingdom', Spring 2019
See more at wwwmodernpoetryintranslation.com
Philip Gross and Cyril Jones read a series of englyn translations – in English and Welsh
From MPT 'Our Small Universe: Focus on Languages of the United Kingdom', Spring 2019
See more at wwwmodernpoetryintranslation.com
Tim Saunders reads ‘Porthpean’ – in English and Cornish
From MPT 'Our Small Universe: Focus on Languages of the United Kingdom', Spring 2019
See more at wwwmodernpoetryintranslation.com
In this episode, MPT Editor Clare Pollard introduces our Digital Pamphlet on Lithuanian poetry, 'How to Swim', and looks back at our online translation workshop on Lithuanian poetry. Hear Martyn Crucefix reading his tranlsation of *** by Nijolė Miliauskaitė, alongside a reading in the original Lithuanian.
This digital pamphlet is published on 21 February 2018.
See more at: modernpoetryintranslation.com/how-to-swim/
IN this episode, MPT Editor Clare Pollard introduces our Digital Pamphlet on Latvian poetry, 'Words about Words', and looks back at our online translation workshop on Latvian poetry. See more at: http://modernpoetryintranslation.com/words-about-words/
IN this episode, MPT Editor Clare Pollard introduces our Digital Pamphlet on Estonian poetry, silencesilencesilencesilencesilencesilence, and looks back at our online translation workshop on Estonian poetry.
See more: http://modernpoetryintranslation.com/estonian-poetry-digital-pamphlet-silencesilencesilencesilencesilencesilence/
Introduction to Jacques Tornay by Annie Freud, published in MPT 'Profound Pyromania'.
I met Jacques Tornay in 2016 at HeadRead, the International Literary Festival of Estonia. Sitting in the audience, listening to poems in many languages which are foreign to me, I was suddenly transported by the familiar sounds of the French language. Having been brought up on the poems of Ronsard, Du Bellay, Lamartine and de Regnier, I had the sensation of inhabiting that part of myself that breathes, hears and dreams in French. While the poet spoke, the hubbub of chairs and glasses quietened and I was overtaken by an irresistible smile.
For those who don’t know him, Tornay is a French-speaking Swiss writer, journalist and translator. His work includes poetry, short stories, aphorisms and biography. He is the author of numerous books and has been the recipient of prestigious prizes. It was no surprise to learn of his love for Rilke, the poet I am most reminded of when reading his work.
Set in the stark landscapes of his native country, these are poems of introspection and of the enigma of the self. They explore opposing states of being human: serenity, anxiety; enlightenment, delusion; conviction, uncertainty; mundanity, exaltation – and their ephemeral nature. Yet in spite of their apparent focus on the ‘grand’ themes, these poems are rooted in the everyday. Whether recalling the delight on fi nding a wild plum lying on his path, the smell of pickled cabbage, or a pair of sandals le on a step, the reader is aware not only of a richness of thought but also of their unique quality of stoicism. They off er the reader an ‘arm to steer a path though Winter’. I am proud to call him a friend.
Grandeur nature (2003), Gains de causes (2009) and Feuilles de présence (2006) by Jacques Tornay are available from Éditions l’Arrière-Pays. h p://www.larrièrepays.fr/
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ANNIE FREUD is the author of three poetry collections published by Picador: The Best Man That Ever Was, The Mirabelles and The Remains. She is one of the Next Generation Poets 2014, named by the Poetry Book Society.
From the introduction to Hisham Bustani's poems in MPT 'A Blossom Shroud' by translator Thoraya El-Rayyes:
Few poems better capture the cynicism of the infamously irate Hisham Bustani than these two odes to frustration. A poet, short-story writer, political commentator and veteran rabble rouser, Bustani’s eventful public life has been punctuated by various brushes with the police state – from harassment by the censors and security services, to arrests for his writing and involvement in political protest.
Bustani’s poem ‘On the Brink Of’ revolves around vivid imagery from the urban landscape of the Jordanian capital Amman, where he lives. Through this imagery, the poem constructs a noisy microcosm of Middle Eastern post-colonial modernity in all its dysfunction – from urban sheep-herding to petrodollar-fuelled sex tourism.
The other poem presented here, ‘The Struggle’, is a forceful portrait depicting the futility of individual human endeavour in the face of larger forces that shape our world. It conveys an experience of powerlessness no doubt familiar to an author from the would-be revolutionary generation of the Arab Spring, a generation whose years of protest and mobilization eventually proved futile in the face of geopolitical considerations and the power of the deep state.
Russian poet Maria Stepanova wrote her epic poem ‘War of the Beasts and the Animals’ in 2015, when the war in the Donbas Region of Ukraine was at its height. Every line in this densely-populated and highly allusive poem emerges from a consciousness of conflict and the martial culture and mythology that allows state-sponsored violence to happen. Stepanova traces the mythmaking culture of war from ballads and films of the Russian Civil War through the Second World War and into the twenty-first century, and Russia’s illegal and covert involvement in a war against Ukraine.
‘War of the Beasts and the Animals’ is impossible to translate in a superficially ‘faithful’ way: the language is so much a captive of the surrounding culture: folk refrains jostle for space against psalms, Silver Age Russian poetry, an Old Russian epic poem ‘The Tale of Igor’s campaign’, pop ballads, phrases from popular culture, Paul Celan, T. S. Eliot – the list is endless. Many of these allusions are simply not accessible to a non-Russian audience and the challenge in translating this extraordinary poem was to fi nd strategies to deal with this super-charged and highly specific ‘modernism’.
Maria and I worked on this translation together during her residency at The Queen’s College in Oxford earlier this year and I used her extensive notes and comments to guide me through. Often, where I felt an image wouldn’t work in translation I could return to Maria’s notes on her intended effect and choose a slightly different image, or extend the image in some way. Maria also gave me the freedom to use images with a currency in the UK, and as both Russia and Britain suff er from martial and imperial mythmaking this gave me great satisfaction. Lines from Kipling found their way into the poem, for example, and a pre-battle quote from Anthony and Cleopatra replaced a line from a Russian poem about lovers on the eve of a battle. In the end this text is a triangulation rather than a translation. It is the result of a dance between the original poem, Maria and me, and it has at its heart Russian poet Grigory Dashevsky’s concept of the existence of ‘a poem’s pre-textual body’ from which we can both draw.
– Sasha Dugdale
ABOUT THE POET: MONA KAREEM Mona Kareem is a poet-writer-translator based in New York. She is the author of three poetry collections. Her translations include Ashraf Fayadh's Instructions Within and an Arabic selection of Alejandra Pizarnik’s poems.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR: ROBIN MOGER: Robin Moger is a freelance translator of Arabic with a particular interest in twentieth-century and contemporary prose and poetry
DUNYA MIKHAIL was born in Iraq and left for the United States in 1996. Her books include The Iraqi Nights, Diary of A Wave Outside the Sea, and The War Works Hard. She also edited a pamphlet of Iraqi poetry titled 15 Iraqi Poets. She was awarded the Kresge Fellowship, Arab American Book Award, and UN Human Rights Award for Freedom of Writing.
Two poet-translators rattle their sabres for a duel of words and French poetry! Listen to MPT's translation duel which took place at Ledbury Poetry Festival, Sunday 9 July 2017. Olivia McCannon and Susan Wicks went head-to-head with their translations of a poem by Ariane Dreyfus. No poets were harmed in the production of this event.
About the translators: Olivia McCannon is a translator of Balzac and winner of the Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. Susan Wicks’ translations of Valérie Rouzeau have won prizes and her own seventh collection, The Months was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
In Gavura’s work the poetic persona has a strong empathy with nature, seeing it as an example of both a non-human otherness and as part of God’s creation. As a theologian Gavura regards nature and humanity as part of a post-lapsarian existence. Gavura’s natural world and the animals which inhabit it are true to themselves and the savagery they express is an aspect of the innocence they retain. His poems draw on everyday feelings of doubt, fear, disillusionment, anger, weakness or even evil thoughts and he tries to bring together these aspects of the contingent world and gain insight. Given his religious sensibility Gavura’s poems frequently incorporate a mythical dimension. This spiritual bedrock in Gavura’s poetry paradoxically opens his poetry to all readers with its acute positioning of human beings, nature and divine aspiration.
- James Sutherland Smith
JÁN GAVURA is the author of three collections, Burning Bees (Pálenie včiel, 2001), which was awarded the Ivan Krasko Prize for the best debut book in the Slovak language, the second Every Morning You Are (Každým ránom si, 2006) and his most recent collection Besa (2012) received a major prize from the Slovak Literary Fund.
JAMES SUTHERLAND-SMITH lectures in British Cultural Studies in the Institute of English and American Studies at Prešov University. He has published six collections of poetry, the last, Mouth, was published by Shearsman Books (2014). He has translated a number of Slovak poets into English and received the Hviezdoslav Prize in 2003 for his translations.
ABOUT SIDDHARTHA BOSE
I was born in Calcutta and spent the first five years of my life there. This city, which was once the second city of the British Empire, was where English literature was fi rst introduced as a discipline of study, to civilise the natives. I spent the next eight years in Bombay, and returned to the city of my birth for another five before moving to the USA on my own when I was eighteen. After seven years in America, I moved to London in 2005 on a British government scholarship. I have lived in London ever since.
My writing grows out of this fractured upbringing across three continents. The linguistic eff ects of this fracturing are peculiar. I grew up with three languages (English, Bengali, and Hindi) and started learning another (French) when I was fourteen. Strangely, given the formative years of my schooling took place in Bombay, I cannot read what is – ostensibly – my mother tongue (Bengali), though I still speak it. I am illiterate in the language of my ancestors.
‘Elegy, Father’s City’ emerges from this illiteracy. I spent my adolescent years fl âneur-ing through the streets of Calcutta. Yet, I am forever severed from it as I read the great literature of the city, in translation. This long poem is my a empt at translating the city back to myself, in English, the language that still colonises the modern Indian state, and mind. This translation, the poem, is filled with fragments, a sense of the incomplete, li le alleyways of thought and image, half-spoken u erances. It is also a poem of mourning, and in that sense, it is haunted by ghosts, like Calcu a itself, and fed by the ghosts of words I can’t read, but only see as strange hieroglyphs, borne across, translated, from a broken, voiceless past.
This podcast includes readings of two poems by award-winning Korean author Han Kang, 'Pitch-Black house of Light' and 'Winter Through a Mirror'.
SOPHIE BOWMAN is a literary translator and student of Korean literature. She won the 2015 Korea Times Translation Award for her translation of poems by Jin Eun-young and her prose translations can be found in Koreana magazine.
HAN KANG is a novelist, poet, and a professor of creative writing at Seoul Institute of the Arts. She received the 2016 Man Booker International Prize for The Vegetarian (2015, Portobello Books, translated by Deborah Smith). Her other publications available in English include Human Acts (2016) and The White Book (forthcoming in 2017).
The readings in this podcast were recorded and edited by James Bull.
In this podcast:
00:00 - Introduction to Denise Riley 02:50 - Denise Riley reading begins 33.05 - Sasha Dugdale introduces Don Mee Choi 42.12 - Don Mee Choi reads translations of Kim Hyesoon 54:00 - Don Mee Choi reads translations of Kim Yideum 1:05:48 - Don Mee Choi reads from her book ‘The Morning News is Exciting’
This podcast features Denise Riley and Don Mee Choi. It was recorded at The Print Room, London, for the launch of Modern Poetry in Translation's winter issue 'The Blue Vein', which features Korean poetry including work by Kim Hyesoon, Kim Yidium, Han Kang and more. See the full contents on www.mptmagazine.com
About Don Mee Choi: Don Mee Choi was born in Korea, but settled in the USA. She is a poet, critic and essayist and in experimental and important work she challenges notions of history and identity. She is one of Korean poetry’s foremost translators and her translations of Kim Hyesoon are published by Bloodaxe. Her last collection of poetry, Hardly War was published to acclaim in 2016. The New York Times said of Hardly War:
‘Deliberately and excitingly difficult in both its style and its subject matter, Don Mee Choi’s second collection, Hardly War, sees its author operating as an archaeologist as much as a poet. Choi’s use of hybrid forms — poetry, memoir, opera libretto, images and artifacts from her father’s career as a photojournalist in the Korean and Vietnam Wars — lets her explore themes of injustice and empire, history and identity, sifting through the detritus of family, translation, propaganda and dislocation.’
http://www.donmeechoi.com
About Denise Riley:
Denise Riley is a critically acclaimed writer of both philosophy and poetry. Her books include War in the Nursery [1983]; ‘Am I that Name?’ [1988]; The Words of Selves [2000]; Denise Riley: Selected Poems [2000]; The Force of Language, with Jean-Jacques Lecercle [2004]; Impersonal Passion [2005], Time Lived, Without Its Flow [2012] and Say Something Back [2016]. She is currently Professor of the History of Ideas and and of Poetry at the University of East Anglia, and has taught and researched widely at many institutions in Europe and America.. Her visiting positions have included A.D. White Professor at Cornell University in the US, Writer in Residence at the Tate Gallery in London, and Visiting Fellow at Birkbeck College in the University of London. She has taught philosophy, art history, poetics, and creative writing. Denise Riley lives in London.
With a career spanning over two decades and six books to his credit, Geet Chaturvedi is one of the most widely read contemporary Hindi authors. His poetry delights the reader with its inner lyrical beauty and playfulness, as well as its sensitivity and sensibility of ideas and imagination.
This recording is read by the author, and translator Anita Gopalan.
Three distinguished poets with international perspectives read their work at Winchester Poetry Festival 2016. Hear new poems by Jan Wagner in Iain Galbraith’s prizewinning translations and a new long poem by Jane Draycott which was written in response to the Dutch modernist poem ‘Awater’. Tara Bergin’s reading includes the response poem she wrote for MPT’s new first issue website, ‘Bachmann’s Warbler’.
ALEMU TEBEJE is an Ethiopian journalist, poet and web-campaigner based in London. His poems have been published in the anthologies Forever Spoken and No Serenity Here, featuring 26 poets from 12 African countries. His website is: www.debteraw.com
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CHRIS BECKETT grew up in Ethiopia and his translations of contemporary Amharic poets such as Bewketu Seyoum and Zewdu Milikit have appeared in MPT, Poetry Review and Wasafiri. His collection of praise shouts and laments, Ethiopia Boy, was published by Carcanet/Oxford Poets in spring 2013. More information on www.chrisbeckettpoems.com
MAJID NAFICY Majid Naficy was born in Isfahan, Iran, in 1952 and currently lives in West Los Angeles, California. Raised in a large and well- educated family, his first poems were published in a literary journal in Isfahan when he was just 13. After studying at the University of California at Los Angeles, Naficy returned to Tehran University, abandoned writing poetry, and joined political groups working to overthrow the Shah. After the 1979 Revolution, when Khomeini began to crack down on dissidents, Naficy and his wife, Ezzat Tabaiyan, were forced to go underground, but continued to work against the new regime. In 1981 both Ezzat and Naficy’s brother, Said, were imprisoned and executed and thereafter, in 1983, Naficy fled the country. With the help of Kurdish guerillas, Naficy escaped to Turkey on horseback, carrying the nine poems he had written after Ezzat’s death, some money, an Afghani passport, and torn photos of his brother and wife. Eighteen months later he was granted asylum in the U. S. and moved to Venice, California.
Naficy’s poetry has been widely anthologized, and he has published more than twenty collections of poetry in Persian and two collections in English. He is a beloved poet among Iranian exiles in Los Angeles and elsewhere, and an inspiration to many. In his honour, a stanza of his poem ‘Ah, Los Angeles!’ is engraved on the wall of a city park in Venice.
This podcast features Elizabeth T. Grey Jr, reading her translation of the poem, first published in MPT 'The Great Flight'.
ELIZABETH T. GRAY, JR. is a poet, translator, and corporate consultant. SERIES | INDIA, a collection of original poems, was published by Four Way Books in 2015. Her translations from classical and contemporary Persian include The Green Sea of Heaven: Fifty Ghazals from the Diwan-i Ha z-i Shirazi (1995) and Iran: Poems of Dissent (2013).
George Szirtes was born in Budapest in 1948, and came to England with his family after the 1956 Hungarian Uprising. He was educated in England, training as a painter, and has always written in English. In recent years he has worked as a translator of Hungarian literature, producing editions of such writers as Ottó Orbán, Zsuzsa Rakovszky and Ágnes Nemes Nagy. He co-edited Bloodaxe’s Hungarian anthology The Colonnade of Teeth. His Bloodaxe poetry books are The Budapest File (2000); An English Apocalypse (2001); Reel (2004), winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize; New & Collected Poems (2008) and The Burning of the Books and other poems (2009), shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2009. Bloodaxe has also published John Sears’ critical study Reading George Szirtes (2008).
This poem is published in MPT ‘The Great Flight’ focusses on refugee poetry – poetry by refugees and about the plight of refugees and migrants. Read more: http://bit.ly/1r8dsmK
This issue introduces us to a range of new work by renowned poets, including Eritrean Ribka Sibhatu and Ethiopian Hama Tuma. South Korean poet and translator Don Mee Choi writes about her experiences of migration and we’ve commissioned a new translation of important work by Syrian poet Golan Haji. Carmen Bugan writes movingly about her father’s failed escape from Communist Romania and Shash Trevett muses on the murder of language. We also feature new versions of two radical women poets: eighth-century Sufi mystic Rābiʿah al-Baṣrī, in Clare Pollard’s translation, and sonnets of female sexuality and desire by renaissance poet Louise Labé in translations by Olivia McCannon – all in this new issue of the groundbreaking magazine dedicated to poetry in translation.
This recording was made on 5th May 2016 at Kings College London, at an event celebrating the launch of MPT's anniversary anthology, Centres of Cataclysm, published by Bloodaxe Books.
ALEXANDER HUTCHISON'S most recent collection, Bones & Breath (Salt, 2013) won the inaugural Saltire Award for Poetry Book of the Year.
PEDRO SERRANO has published five collections of poems. He co-edited and co-translated the groundbreaking anthology The Lamb Generation which brought together translations of 30 contemporary British poets in 2000. He has also translated Shakespeare’s King John into Spanish. His collection Peatlands was published by Arc Publishing in 2014 in Anna Crowe’s translation.
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ANNA CROWE is a poet, translator and co-founder and former Artistic Director of StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival. Her Mariscat collection, Figure in a Landscape, won the Callum Macdonald Memorial Award and was a PBS Choice. Her latest book of translations is Peatlands (Arc 2014) by Pedro Serrano.
Choman Hardi, interview at The Queens College Oxford.
CHOMAN HARDI was born in Iraqi Kurdistan. She came to England as a refugee in 1993. She has published collections of poetry in Kurdish and English. In 2010 four poems from her English collection, Life For Us (Bloodaxe Books, 2004), were selected for the English GCSE curriculum. Her forthcoming collection, Considering the Women, is published by Bloodaxe Books in 2015.
Modern Poetry in Translation Magazine (MPT) celebrates fifty years between July 2015 and July 2016 with a programme of special events and publications. To mark the occasion, MPT is working with Bloodaxe Books to publish an anthology of the most exciting and important work published in MPT over the last 50 years.
Speaking at International Translation Day in October 2015, Sasha Dugdale was joined by former editors David and Helen Constantine to discuss the anthology and look back over the magazine's extraordinary history.
Find out more about MPT's 50th anniversary: bit.ly/MPT50
This podcast was recorded at the launch of MPT ‘I WISH...' and features Michael Rosen and Marina Boroditskaya in conversaiton with MPT Editor, Sasha Dugdale.
Read an interview with Michael and Marina on the MPT Magazine website here: http://bit.ly/1Yge46E
Read poems from MPT 'I WISH...' here: http://bit.ly/1KsAmw0
This podcast was recorded in July 2015 at a special celebration to mark the opening of MPT's 50th year and 12 months of events, publications and special projects.
Find out more about MPT's 50th anniversary celebrations: http://www.mptmagazine.com/page/fifty-years-mpt/
About David Constantine David Constantine was born in Salford in 1944. For thirty years he taught German at the Universities of Durham and Oxford. He holds honorary professorships in English at the Universities of Liverpool and Aberystwyth, and was co-editor of Modern Poetry in Translation until 2013.
He is a translator and editor of Hölderlin, Goethe, Kleist and Brecht. His translation of Goethe’s Faust, Parts I and II, came out in Penguin in 2005 and 2009. He has published several volumes of poetry, most recently Nine Fathom Deep (Bloodaxe, 2009); also a novel and three volumes of short stories, the most recent of these being The Shieling (Comma Press, 2009).
He was the 2010 winner of the BBC National Short Story Award for 'Tea at the Midland'.
MPT’s Spring Issue 'Scorched Glass' focussed on Iranian poetry. In July 2015 we held a series of events celebrating Iranian Poetry at Poetry International, produced in partnership with Southbank Centre and the British Council.
In this podcast you'll hear readings by Hubert Moore, Nasrin Parvaz, Stephen Watts, Ziba Karbassi, Paul Batchelor, Karen McCarthy Woolf and Pascale Petit.
TEDI LÓPEZ MILLS
Tedi López Mills was born in Mexico City in 1959. She studied philosophy at the Mexican National University and literature at the Sorbonne. She has published ten books of poetry including Muerte en la Rúa Augusta, published in David Shook’s translation as Death on Rua Augusta by Eyewear Publishing in 2014.
AMARJIT CHANDAN Amarjit Chandan was born in Nairobi in 1946 and studied in India at Panjab University, coming to Britain in 1980 to live in London. He has published five collections of poetry and three books of essays in Punjabi notably Jarhān (poems) and Phailsufiān and Nishāni (essays). He has edited and translated about 30 anthologies of Indian and world poetry and fiction by, among others, Brecht, Neruda, Ritsos, Hikmet, Cardenal, Martin Carter and John Berger in Punjabi.
The Somali-English Poetry Collective
The Somali-English Poetry Collective is a group of five women: Abyan Cusmaan, Jawaahir Daahir, Karin Koller, Idil Osman and Marilyn Ricci, based in Leicester.
They share a passion for poetry and have also produced a Somali-English book: Somalia To Europe: Stories from the Somali Diaspora available through: www.Leicesterquakerpress.org.uk or www.jdsaqal.com.
NIKOLA MADZIROV Nikola Madzirov is a Macedonian poet, essayist, translator and editor. His poetry has been translated into over 30 languages. He won the European Hubert Burda Prize for young East European poets for his collection Relocated Stone (2007). A selection of his poetry, Remnants of Another Age, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2013.
PEGGY REID Graham and Peggy Reid have translated and co-translated many and various texts, including history, novels, plays, film scripts and poetry. In 1973 they won the Struga Poetry Festival Translation Prize, and later participated in the few but very productive Struga International Translation Workshops. Both have honorary titles from Ss. Cyril and Methodius University and both have been awarded an MBE for services to literature and language in Macedonia. Their translations of Nikola Madzirov appear in his collection Remnants of Another Age (Bloodaxe, 2013).
SUJATA BHATT Sujata Bhatt’s Collected Poems (Carcanet, 2013) was a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. Her new collection, Poppies in Translation, will be published in March 2015, also by Carcanet.
KAREN LEEDER Karen Leeder is Professor of Modern German Literature at the University of Oxford, and Fellow and Tutor in German at New College, Oxford. She has published widely on modern German literature, especially poetry and has been active in translation in the UK and beyond: including a stint on the English PEN Work in Translation Committee, the Steering Committee of the British Centre for Translation and on the Board of MPT.
DURS GRÜNBEIN Durs Grünbein was born in Dresden in the former East Germany in 1962. He has lived in Berlin since 1985, working as poet, essayist and translator from English, Latin and Greek, and now as Professor at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. He won Germany’s major literary prize, the Georg-Büchner-Preis, at the age of 33. Ashes for Breakfast (Faber), his ninth book of poems and his first in English translation, was launched at the 2006 Aldeburgh Poetry Festival.
CHRISTINE MARENDON
Christine Marendon lives in Hamburg where she works with children with special needs. Her poems feature in anthologies including Jahrbuch der Lyrik 2013 (Poetry Yearbook 2013), and she has been widely published in periodicals.
KEN COCKBURN Ken Cockburn has published two books of poems, Souvenirs and Homelands (1998) and On the flyleaf (2007). As editor, he worked on several anthologies including The Order of Things: an anthology of Scottish sound, pattern and concrete poems (2001), Tweed Rivers (2005), and The Season Sweetens / Die Saison Versüssend (2006).
ANA MARTINS MARQUES Ana Martins Marques has published two books of poetry: A vida submarina (Scriptum, 2009) and Da arte das armadilhas (Companhia das Letras, 2011), which won the Brazilian Prêmio Biblioteca Nacional and the Prêmio Alphonsus Guimaraens.
JULIA SANCHES
Julia is Brazilian by birth but has lived in New York, Mexico City, Lausanne, Edinburgh and Barcelona. She is currently studying Comparative Literature and Literary Translation at UPF in Barcelona. She completed her M.A. in Philosophy and English Literature at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland in 2010. She has been nominated for the Guardian and the Herald Student Media Awards in the category of Best Photographer. While doing her masters, she also works as a freelance translator, private teacher of English and Portuguese, and as a reader for Random House Mondadori. She is currently learning her sixth language and living in her sixth country.
Recorded at the Brighton festival, Angélica and Hilary read two poems in English and Portuguese, and answer questions from two GCSE students.
ANGELICA FREITAS Angélica Freitas’s recent poetry collection, Um útero é do tamanho de um punho (Cosac Naify, 2012), was nominated for the Portugal Telecom Prize. Her first book, Rilke Shake (Cosac Naify, 2007), has been translated into English and German. She co-edits the poetry journal Modo de Usar & Co. from her home in Pelotas, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.
HILARY KAPLAN Hilary Kaplan is the translator of Rilke Shake by Angélica Freitas (Phoneme Media). Her work was featured on BBC Radio 4 and has received fellowships from the PEN Translation Fund and Itaú Cultural. She is translating a collection of short stories by Paloma Vidal.
Paulo Leminski (1944-1989) was a writer of prose, poetry, literary criticism and translation. His first publications appeared in Invenção, a journal of the Brazilian Concretist poets. Leminski later engaged with Brazilian counter-cultural movements of the 1960's and 1970's. His extensive body of poetry was collected in 2013's Toda Poesia.
Readings by:
JAMES DUNCAN Jamie Duncan is currently completing a Ph.D. in Linguistics at Lancaster University. He publishes poetry in English and Portuguese through The Pedestrian Sounds Press.
WELLINGTON DIAS Born in the Amazonian state of Amapá, Wellington Dias graduated in Performance Art at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO). He co-founded the Rio based collective Bando Filhotes de Leão (RJ).
This recording was made at the Saison Poetry Library, a public event that formed part of the British Council's Korea Market Focus at the London Book Fair.
The event celebrated the publication of Kim Hyesoon's poetry in the mpt 'Twisted Angels', and the launch of 'I'm OK, I'm Pig!', published by Bloodaxe in April 2014.
For more information:
www.mptmagazine.com
http://www.bloodaxebooks.com/titlepage.asp?isbn=1780371020
www.britishcouncil.org/KoreaMarketFocus
In this podcast, Seán Hewitt reads and discusses his translation of Ciaran Carson's only published poem in Irish.
Seán Hewitt was born 1990, read English at Girton College, Cambridge, and is currently studying for an MA Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool. He translates from the Irish.
Wojciech Bonowicz is a poet, a columnist and an editor and an author of six poetry volumes. The most recent is 'Polish Signs' (2010). His volume 'High Seas' was awarded the prestigious Gdynia Literary Prize (2007). He is also an essayist and literary critic working for one of the most influential Polish weeklies, 'Tygodnik Powszechny'.and for the monthly 'Znak'.
In this podcast, Bonowicz discusses trends in Polish poetry and focusses on Krystyna Milobedzka as an example of this.
This podcast was recorded at Europe House.
Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese reads a six-word poem by Krystyna Miłobędzka in English and Polish, then discusses her arrival at the word 'transparenting' which runs vertically through the centre of the poem.
Talking to MPT Editor Sasha Dugdale, Elżbieta then discusses how the poem's typographical layout in MPT's 'Secret Agents of Sense' becomes central to it's translated meaning.
A reading of Polish poet Justyna Bargielska's 'Two mirrors, one of which magnifies' from Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese and the English translation from Maria Jastrzębska.
Followed by a discussion with Sasha Dugdale on poetry translation, neologisms and the origin of the 'tantrum tour'...
Claudiu Komartin, born in 1983, is a Romanian poet and translator. His fourth book, Cobalt, came out in May 2013. Between 2011–2012 he was resident writer at the Romanian Cultural Institute in London and his extended ‘Poem For Pop’ was published in the UK in Long Poem Magazine in 2011. He edits the review Poesis International.
Stephen Watts is a poet, editor and translator. His most recent work is Mountain Language/Lingua di montagna (Hearing Eye 2009). He edited the Punjabi poet Amarjit Chandan’s Sonata For Four Hands and co-translated Meta Kušar’s Ljubljana (both from Arc Publications 2010). He is also co-translating, with Cristina Viti, a short novel by Reza Baraheni.
Mihaela Moscaliuc is the author of Father Dirt (Kinereth Gensler Award, Alice James Books in 2010) and co-translator of Carmelia Leonte’s Death Searches for You A Second Time (Red Dragonfly Press, 2003). Her poems, reviews, translations and articles appear in The Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, New Letters, Poetry International, Pleiades, Arts & Letters, Absinthe and elsewhere.
Oana Sanziana Marian was born in Romania and moved to the Us when she was eight. She has published poems, translations, articles and criticism in Phoned-In, Iron Horse Literary Review, Artforum, Guernica, Asymptote, Words Without Borders, and her translation of Norman Manea’s novel The Lair was published by Yale University Press in 2012.
Shash Trevett, now living in York, came to the U.K. from Sri Lanka in 1987 to escape the civil war. For many years she stopped speaking and writing in Tamil, a language which she has now started to re-engage with in her poetry.
Fiona is a poet, translator from Chinese, and a musician.
“an extraordinary musician who brings into her zheng music a strong cross-cultural understanding” - Edward W. Said (1935-2003).
www.fionasze.com www.mptmagazine.com
Chris Beckett was born in London but grew up mostly in Ethiopia. His poetry been published in Ambit, Envoi, Magma, Modern Poetry in Translation, Poetry London, Rialto, Seam, Smiths Knoll, Stand, The North, The Wolf and Wasafiri.
www.mptmagazine.com
Frances Leviston’s Public Dream was published by Picador in 2007 and shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Jerwood-Aldeburgh First Collection Prize.
www.mptmagazine.com
Ester Naomi Perquin is winner of the VSB Poetry Award in the Netherlands for her recent Celinspecties (Cell Inspections). Translated by the renowned Paul Vincent.
www.mptmagazine.com
Menno Wigman, shortlisted for the VSB Poetry Prize for his collection Mijn naam is Legioen (My Name is Legion), is one of Holland's most prominent writers. Translated by David Colmer, whose recent translations were shortlisted for the Popescu Prize.
www.mptmagazine.com
Toon Tellegen is one of the best known writers in the Netherlands. Multi-award winning and with more than 20 collections of poetry to date, he is also a novelist and a popular and prolific children's writer. His Raafvogels (Raptors) in Judith Wilkinson's translation won the Popescu prize in 2011.
www.mptmagazine.com
Valérie Rouzeau's latest collection, Vrouz, has just won the prestigious Prix Apollinaire in France. She has published a dozen collections, including Pas revoir, translated by poet Susan Wicks, shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and winner of the Scott Moncrieff Prize.
www.mptmagazine.com